Jun 4, 2018

All hail the queen of ice birds in all her glory! This patch features a ton of movement to the jungle meta with nerfs on the top two junglers and buffs on a variety of high-damage favorites. Meanwhile, jungle Taliyah it the latest fad to grace the rift, and if you were just thinking how nice it is to not have Lucian players dominating the game at every turn....sorry!

Check out the full list below!

SEASON 8 - PATCH 8.11FASTEST RANKEDLP GAIN TIER LIST

"What Are the Best Champions to Climb With"

Preface Chatter

All hail the queen of ice birds in all her glory! This patch features a ton of movement to the jungle meta with nerfs on the top two junglers and buffs on a variety of high-damage favorites. Meanwhile, jungle Taliyah it the latest fad to grace the rift, and if you were just thinking how nice it is to not have Lucian players dominating the game at every turn....sorry!

The purpose of this list is to pick out the champions that when played, will allow you to climb divisions the fastest by winning more games. This list contains more off-meta and counter-meta placements that do well against popular picks.

If you're looking for a more meta based tier list based on popularity, be sure to check out the FOTM list as well!

Instructions and Caveats:

Champions in BOLD I will talk about shortly

Champions UNDERLINEDmay be over/undervalued, but aren't/haven't played enough for me to make a better judgment.

Within each tier, the champions are strongest from left to right, but within a tier each champion's strength is relatively close. This is especially true for Tiers 2 and 3 where these champions are ALL highly playable and player dependent on how strong they are in-game.

Win Rates are important in analyzing each champion's strength but are not the end-all criteria for any champion's position.

Professional Picks may not necessarily translate into good picks for solo queue ladder, the two have slightly different meta-games and skill levels.

The creator of this list is diamond, so there may be some personal bias towards higher tier play on certain champions.

God Tier: These champions are almost impossible to keep down. If your team doesn't make it a priority to shut down these champions and shut them down hard, even if they lose their lane, lose in CS, and it's their first time playing the champion, they can be a massive nuisance for your team. On the other hand, if they're actually good at the champion...that's when it's time to throw in the towel. Tier 1: These champions generally do very well regardless, and have some sort of advantage over most other champions. When they do well, their team does well. Even when they don't do well, their team still has a good chance of a comeback victory by utilizing one or more aspects of their late game utility. Tier 2: This is the Tier of balanced champions where Riot shoots to place their designs. These champions generally do well in their own right, and are very strong picks with a good chance of winning. However, they're not overpowered by any means and do have their weaknesses. Tier 3: These champions can still do very well, but tend to need a little more snowballing to get rolling. Even if they get an early lead, it's still very possible to turn the tides on them with just a mistake or two. They may also have some weaknesses that can be capitalized on. Tier 4: These champions are either underpowered or offer less reward than other champions for the same amount of effort. These champions basically start winning from the get-go or get made fun of for the rest of the game. They need gold to do their job correctly, and if they don't get enough of it, they become sandbags for the enemy team to punch. Chances of a comeback with one of these champions feeding on your team is almost none.

Champion Explanations

Anivia [God Tier Mid] - Anivia continues to border on the edge of being broken via the absurd amount of damage and utility she provides. In a solo queue environment where players have a tough time coordinating a push and get caught out far too often, Anivia's wall and AOE stuns are a utterly game-changing. When you add this to her ability to instantly clear out minion waves and deal half of enemy's health pools at a touch of her ultimate, this ice phoenix is a solo queue goddess.

Evelynn [God Tier Jungle] - After nerfs to Graves and Xin Zhao, Evelynns is shining a bit more brightly this patch. There's not much that's different from last patch when it comes to Evelynn, but she's always been a solo queue powerhouse.

Fiddlesticks [Tier 1 Support] - With Janna's pick rate at an all-time low and sustain supports unpopular, Fiddlesticks is finding a lot of popularity as a support pick. His poke damage is sticking and his ability to prevent and turn-around dives is immense. This results in an excellent engage or counter-engage as your team requires it.

Lucian [God Tier Marksman] - The essence reaver changes really put Lucian in an amazing spot. When you combine his natural synergy with auto-attack resets via his passive with his mana-hungry playstyle, Lucian quickly becomes an incredibly mobile marksman without limitations. The BoTRK cost reduction was just icing on the cake, resulting in an incredibly powerful marksman in a single patch, all without even touching his actual base stats or skills.

Pyke [Tier 1 Support] - After the hotfix, Pyke is actually in a really good spot. He's incredibly fun to play, and his playstyle allows support players to finally make good use of one of the best support items in the game...Duskblade. As an automatic Oracle, it's really a godsend to support players who never seem to remember to use their red trinket properly. It also gives assassin mains a champion to play while they're auto-filled.

Taliyah [Tier 2 Jungle] - Be sure to check out the Taliyah jungle article for more detail, but in a nutshell, she's a solid jungler after her latest tweaks and changes in Patch 8.11. If you do see her in your game, don't take her too lightly, and don't bother dodging. It's totally viable unless they're trolling.

Trundle [Tier 1 Jungle] - Similar to Evelynn, Trundle was in a good spot before. However, with the latest nerfs to Xin Zhao and Graves, he's finding even more success in the new rift scuttle era. The fact that he generally gets played against tanky teams and tanks are in a bad spot right now inflates his win rate a bit, but otherwise he's still good against the large majority of team compositions.

Disclaimer:

The purpose of this list is for discussion and to provide a starting point for champion selection.

Agree? Disagree? Comment below!

If you're looking for a more meta based tier list based on popularity, be sure to check out the FOTM list as well!